Mobile communications has changed the way people communicate and mobile phones have been transformed from a luxury item to an essential part of every day life. The use of mobile phones is today dictated by social situations, rather than hampered by location or technology. While voice connections fulfill the basic need to communicate, and mobile voice connections continue to filter even further into the fabric of every day life, the mobile Internet is the next step in the mobile communication revolution. The mobile Internet is poised to become a common source of everyday information, and easy, versatile mobile access to this data will be taken for granted.
Third generation (3G) cellular networks have been specifically designed to fulfill these future demands of the mobile Internet. As these services grow in popularity and usage, factors such as cost efficient optimization of network capacity and quality of service (QoS) will become even more essential to cellular operators than it is today. These factors may be achieved with careful network planning and operation, improvements in transmission methods, and advances in receiver techniques. To this end, carriers need technologies that will allow them to increase downlink throughput and, in turn, offer advanced QoS capabilities and speeds that rival those delivered by cable modem and/or DSL service providers. In this regard, networks based on wideband CDMA (WCDMA) technology may make the delivery of data to end users a more feasible option for today's wireless carriers.
In the case of a WCDMA downlink, multiple access interference (MAI) may result from inter-cell and intracell interference. The signals from neighboring base stations compose intercell interference, which is characterized by scrambling codes, channels and angles of arrivals different from the desired base station signal. Spatial equalization may be utilized to suppress inter-cell interference. In a synchronous downlink application, employing orthogonal spreading codes, intra-cell interference may be caused by multipath propagation. Due to the non-zero cross-correlation between spreading sequences with arbitrary time shifts, there is interference between propagation paths after despreading, causing MAI. The level of intra-cell interference depends strongly on the channel response. In nearly flat fading channels, the physical channels remain almost completely orthogonal and intra-cell interference does not have any significant impact on the receiver performance. Frequency selectivity is common for the channels in WCDMA networks.
Mobile networks allow users to access services while on the move, thereby giving end users freedom in terms of mobility. However, this freedom does bring uncertainties to mobile systems. The mobility of the end users causes dynamic variations both in the link quality and the interference level, sometimes requiring that a particular user change its serving base station. This process is known as handover (HO). Handover is the essential component for dealing with the mobility of end users. It guarantees the continuity of the wireless services when the mobile user moves across cellular boundaries.
WCDMA networks may allow a mobile handset to communicate with a multiple number of cell sites. This may take place, for example, for a soft-handoff from one cell site to another. Soft-handoffs may involve cell sites that use the same frequency bandwidth. On occasions, there may be handoffs from one cell site to another where the two cell sites use different frequencies. In these cases, the mobile handset may need to tune to the frequency of the new cell site. Additional circuitry may be required to handle communication over a second frequency of the second cell site while still using the first frequency for communicating with the first cell site. The additional circuitry may be an undesirable extra cost for the mobile handset. In addition, the mobile handset may require different transmit power to establish and maintain a communication link with the new cell site. In a handoff scenario, the mobile handset may still be receiving a strong signal from the current cell site and a weaker signal from the new cell site. In this regard, transmit power may have to be adjusted so that the handoff may be achieved and the mobile handset may begin to communicate with the new cell site. Conventional methods of calculating noise power utilize mean and/or variance, which results in a biased estimate of the noise power. Such biased estimates are often times inaccurate.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.